Comfort inside mans own prison

“Kierkegaard had no illusions about man’s urge to freedom. He knew how comfortable people were in­side the prison of their character defenses. Like many prisoners they are comfortable in their limited and protected routines, and the idea of a parole into the wide world of chance, accident, and choice terrifies them. No mistake about it: the curriculum in the “school” of anxiety is the unlearning of repression, of everything that the child taught him­self to deny so that he could move about with a minimal animal equanimity.” Ernest Becker